


the long way home

by shslsweetheart



Category: Original Work
Genre: (I promise), (as i actually write more), (eventually) - Freeform, (i'll try not to be too terrible with it i promise), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Historical, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Original Fiction, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Romance, Unrequited Love, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 21:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20316154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shslsweetheart/pseuds/shslsweetheart
Summary: September 1914. Otto knows that it's not exactly the best time to be the son of German immigrants in a small town in the middle of the English countryside, but he manages. Every day spent with his best friend, June, is a blessing in disguise, despite the mundanity of their lives. Otto, knowing he'll end up in the army one way or another, decides to be the master of his own fate and enlist himself. He promises June that he'll return to her, but it turns out that will take a lot longer than expected. A lot, lot longer.





	the long way home

**Author's Note:**

> so here's the very beginning on a project i've spent way too much time researching to work on it on and off. i promise i'll get to the end eventually, and i promise it will be a happy ending. while trying to plot this out i realized that it sounded a lot like the odyssey and ran with it, so there's a hint at what this will be like. it's a little dialogue heavy, but i'm getting better about it. be sure to leave a comment and tell me what you think of it, good or bad!

Otto felt like sinking to the bottom of the brooklet and never surfacing. Their favorite spot to chat was the definition of pastoral, scenery brought to life straight from a Monet: the sunlight filtering in from the canopy above, the foxgloves and dog roses and cow parsley that June so adored dancing in the wind, the dragonflies and water skippers gliding over the beguiling current. It wouldn’t be a bad way to go; the water would fill every sinew and pore and he would no longer be drowning in half-written love letters and fractured apologies. Yes, those left behind might have one or two issues with such a decision, but  _ god  _ he could already see the look on her face when he told her. (Not that the look on her face when she found him in  _ Ophelia  _ would be any better, he just wouldn’t be around to see it. That should have been a realization that made him feel ashamed, but it wasn’t. That’s what made him feel guilty: the lack of guilt.)

A branch snapped. He whipped his head around to find a rather familiar looking girl with a rather disappointed look on her face. The sunlight filtered through a few stray pieces of flaxen hair to settle in her eyes. She was hiking up her cotton-white dress with both hands—presumably in an attempt to make as little noise as possible. However, looped around one of her arms was a wicker basket that was usually reserved for picnics by the brooklet, and those in of themselves were special occasions.

“You’re no fun,” June pouted, slouching, then straightened her posture to adjust her hat. (Her favorite straw hat with a pitch black ribbon tied around it: another sign that helped Otto come to the conclusion that today was to be something special.) “I was so close, too.” When she shook her head, that downtrodden look on her face had vanished completely, replaced by the brightest of smiles and a light in her eyes that Otto hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing in a very long time.

June was a girl quite unlike anyone else in Answick, quite unlike anyone else on Earth. On first glance, she’s just another blonde-haired, grey-eyed girl whose words were far too big for her tiny frame. But that stereotypically feminine persona was a sharp mind and a sharper tongue, but more to the point, a mysterious, seemingly endless source of light. She was a person so imbued with sunshine that when he first met her, Otto couldn’t stand even just being in the same room as her, found her unconditional warmth infuriating. How could someone be so naive, how could someone be so kind and expect nothing in return? He found the answer years later, but knowing it was still just as frustrating as living without it. It was a matter of instinct; there was no underlying meaning, or insidious ulterior motive. It was just what she defaulted to, had always been like. So Otto stuck around, decided that  _ someone  _ needed to look after her, make sure she didn’t get in over her head.

(If you asked June, Otto was something steady to lean upon. Not in the way that his physical frame was anything special, not that his dark, tousled hair or hazel eyes that always had a certain tiredness about them were unattractive either. It was more that, while June found herself always in danger of floating away, tied to fragmented anxieties that never slept, he was always there to tug her back down to Earth. Though he could be gruff and impatient (and cynical and  _ certainly  _ a smart ass), June never smiled brighter, never felt safer than when she was with him. The joy she found when she finally got him to laugh, to  _ really  _ laugh at a stupid joke or pun she made was unmatchable. There was something about the way how half of his mouth curled up before the other when he smiled, or the bemused expression he wore whenever she would tell him a story. Whatever it was, she was smitten with it, with him. He could tease and poke and prod her all he wanted, but whether he knew it or not, he was stuck with her now, and that was that.)

“And what exactly are you gawking at?” she moved to take a seat next to him on the forest floor, adjusting her dress accordingly. “Something on my face?”

“While the  _ devastatingly  _ happy look on your face is certainly a sight for sore eyes,” he replied. “How about the picnic basket on your arm?”

A blush colored her cheeks. “You’re hilarious. I got a job at the post office today, since most everyone has already left town for the war. I figured you wouldn’t mind celebrating with me if there was food involved. Was I right?”

Otto fought not to visibly tense at the mention of it. “While it’s certainly a nice bonus, you know I’d celebrate with you anyway, Junebug. Though, what exactly did you bring for the occasion, just out of curiosity?”

Her laugh was airy. “You can’t fool me, Othello. Your heart’s in your stomach, I know.” She opened the basket, pulling out the silverware first, laughing again when Otto let out a low noise of exasperation. Then the main course: two pieces of the best looking cheesecake he had ever seen, covered in plastic wrap. “I assume you’d like one?” She asked, eyebrows raised.

“Don’t mind if I do.” He relieved her of one of the plates as quickly as he could without risking it falling to the forest floor below, reaching over for one of the forks balanced on her skirt in the next moment. She gave her signature laugh and head shake, then unwrapped her own pastry. It was honestly a miracle that it was still this warm at the end of September, so the pair sat in silence for a little while, enjoying the sweetness of June’s gift, the comfortable silence and the warmth the sun’s own gift provided. But it couldn’t last forever.

“June,” Otto started, then shut his mouth again. He was so tempted to call off this plan, to just leave her a letter she’d read after he was already gone, but if he did that, and didn’t die while he was away, he would be a dead man when he came back. “June, I have to tell you something, but I need you to promise me that you won’t freak out.”

“What are you—” Her face fell in an instant. “You know it makes me nervous when you say things like that, dummy.” When she saw how hard his gaze was, she added in a quiet voice: “I promise.”

It took him a few moments to spit it out; the words kept falling to pieces in his throat. “I have to leave town for a while.”

The glint of realization in her eyes came with a terrible price. “You didn’t.”

“I did.”

Her hands moved to cover her mouth. To what end, Otto didn’t know, as they did nothing to muffle the strangled sob that crawled its way out of her throat and did nothing to mask the expression that Otto would pay a good sum of money never to see again. Thankfully, due to the weight of the conversation or otherwise, her head had fallen to tilt downwards, the brim of her hat hiding her eyes both from Otto and the sun.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could manage to say.

_ “You’re sorry?” _

He was. Honest to god.

“I had to. My father would never forgive me if I refused. Some preconceived notion that if his son fought for this country its citizens would stop—”

“Did you ever stop to consider the fact that  _ I  _ might never forgive you?” June didn’t have any time to loathe herself for being so selfish:

“I know you will,” this statement was spoken in the matter-of-fact tone that, though rarely used by Otto, never failed to make June’s blood boil. This time, though, all it managed to do was make her cry.

“Goddamn it all to hell!” Though at first Otto couldn’t understand why she threw her hat to the side while she said this, he soon realized that it was so she could wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his neck without any unnecessary complications. “When do you leave? Where are you going? When are you coming home?”

He fought back the kind of snarky remark that had always come second nature to him, and replaced it with the kind of tentative truth she probably wanted to hear.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m supposed to receive my orders in a few days. I’ll tell you as soon I know, I promise.”

That quieted her for a few moments. She raised her head so she could look him in the eye. “You should get out of that habit while you can,” she said; not a hint of insincerity could be found in her voice (nor a hint of any other known emotion).

“I don’t understand.”

“Making promises,” she explained as if it were painfully obvious. “You shouldn’t make promises so easily when soon there’s no way to be sure you’ll be able to keep them.”

“June—”

“You really have to go?”

“Yeah. I do.”

Silence.

“Okay.”

She didn’t say another word. Her arms moved back to rest at her sides, her head was now content to merely lean against his shoulder. The soft lull of the brooklet seemed to return after a short absence, and so did the birdsong and the general rustle of the forest. As if they had been holding their breath, waiting for normalcy to return. They couldn’t realize that after that day, it would never quite be the same.

Otto didn’t bother trying to make another attempt at conversation.


End file.
